If you are using a plugin for highlighting SystemVerilog code, it's the plugin's fault and not Sublime's. Well, directly speaking at least.

I see that there is a problem with the syntax definition and I also see why this is prolematic to parse as a regular expression, which ST limits you on, but there is a way to match this kind of function splitting, even if not "perfectly".

SystemVerilog is not whitespace-sensitive - in general, I believe all tokens can be separated by arbitrary whitespace (i.e. any number of spaces, tabs or newlines).

I was hoping the plugin author would be able to make a quick fix for this issue (and potentially update the other regexs as well), however if I find some time I'll investigate the procedure, however I'm new to Sublime Text, so I'll need to get up to speed with the revision control system used, the local install/build/test procedure, etc first...

I've taken a look at the language definition file and even from a cursory inspection I can see a number of bugs (also confirmed by real-world source code samples that fail to highlight or context-search correctly). I'm now in two minds whether it's worth trying to fix the original file or write a new one.

It also appears that many of the language definition tutorials found online are out of date (referring to JSON instead of YAML, etc).

If I find time, I'll fix it, but I was hoping for something that worked out the box and not having to jump through hoops.

Yes, the updated YAML syntax docs have not been merged to the main branch but to the ST2 branch. I have no idea why this was even considered and I aim to merge these more or less myself, if I have to, but I don't have time for that currently. You can find the YAML docs here.

I'm maintaining the verilog syntax and I'm fully aware that there is lot of things that could be improved: if you have modification please update the existing one and do some pull request so that everyone benefits from your change